Some Progress on the House

Last week our contractor and his crew came out to tackle a chunk of our ever-growing punch list and I'm so excited about all of the little changes to our house! Wanna see some of them??

In our kitchen, the farm animal tile came down (we tried to save the pig tile as a momento but it was a no-go..) and the butcher block countertop went in:
Now I've got to figure out how I'm going to seal it. I've heard a lot of great things about Waterlox as a sealer for butcher block but I've also read that it causes ambering and I'd like to keep mine as close to their natural color as possible. I'm leaning towards just using mineral oil, especially since the butcher block won't be in an area where it is likely to get much water on it, but I haven't pulled the trigger yet. Any advice?? 

Remember how my daughter was begging for a hanging chair? We got one on the cheap at Pier 1 at the end of the season, and my contractor hung it up for us (he had a pretty impressive way of installing it that seems very, very secure - I took some pics of how it was installed and will share them with you sometime soon). My girl has been swinging nonstop ever since!

We also had new crown molding installed in our dining room and kitchen - the old stuff was just really, really sad:
And no, my new crown isn't an ugly ivory color like it looks to be in the pic. I painted it with Benjamin Moore White Dove (one of my proven winner white paint colors).

Our contractor also did several less exciting jobs such as installing a storm door (there's my photo bomber again...), 
replacing some exterior trim, securing our wobbly banister, and a bunch of other things. Some of the jobs we had him do were ones that my husband and I could have done ourselves (albeit in ten times the amount of time) but our to-do list is still plenty long and the amount of time we have to do things is pretty short so it was worth it to us to have someone take a few things off of our list. 

Last week, I also got my French mattress cushion for my window seat - Love it!!!

I'll have some more pics and give you some info on pricing for a French mattress cushion (which varied a LOT from person to person) in an upcoming post.

And of course it's the last week of the One Room Challenge where I've been working on a makeover of our guest room. I've got a busy couple of days ahead of me because this is what my room looks like with only two more days to go. For real.

Cross your fingers with me that I can pull it off for the room reveal on Thursday! See you then!